Q: iPhone 4s Battery Life?

I've found that battery life is closely tied to the amount of Push email I get. On Saturday or Sunday, when I get very little mail, the phone only uses about 15% during the day; I end up with 85% left. On a weekday, with normal use, it's about 40%, as I said. With very heavy use (2 hours of calls) I get a low battery warning towards bedtime.

Another disappointed iphone 4S user here. After reading a few pages this is what I have concluded:

This is the first iPhone I have. There are two things I notice about the battery of this phone.

The battery temperature rises noticeably after using it for about 10 min. Generally checking emails, browsing safari, sending texts or using other online messengers, without starting any game, would make the back of the phone noticeably warm after 10 to 15 min. If usage continues, the metal sides of the phone get warm too. After turning off all iCloud sync, this problem seems to be less prominant.

The battery drains quickly. I charge it every day. In the morning I plug out the charger and at night it dies. Today I plugged out the battery around 9 am. Now it has 24% left. The usage is as below:

Usage: 3 Hours, 57 Minutes

Standby: 10 Hours, 52 Minutes.

I tested before, the phone battery lowers around 5%-10% during standby for a night's sleep. So I infer that the usage part drains the battery really hard. For today, all iCloud sync is shut off but all notifications on. No game play, only web surfing, email checking, social networking, Siri talk and two skype cam that lasts for 20 min in total.

It seems to me the battery really *****.

Please come up with a solution.

You get a very slanted view by coming to conclusions from reading the forum. If you go to a hospital and note that everyone there is sick do you conclude that everyone outside the hospital is sick also? The support forum is a hospital. People who don't have problems don't read threads of people who do (unless they think they have a solution) and don't generally post saying "no problems", partly because if they do anyone who DOES have a problem jumps on them. Apple sold 4 million 4S iPhones in the first weekend. If everyone who bought one had a problem you would have more than the few hundred messages that have been posted.

There is a real problem with some iPhones, but it is not all iPhones, and probably not even a large percentage (or you would see tens of thousands of posts). And it is not unique to the 4S; there have been a steady stream of messages about battery problems and their solutions over the past 4+ years. Sometimes associated with new models or updates, but many just at random times. Try searching for "battery problems" and you will see how far back it goes.

If you have a problem work on finding the cause, because there is one. Don't wait for Apple; even if they decide today that there is something they can do to fix it there will be a delay of several months as they test it thoroughly. It would be far worse to release an untested update and cause new issues with over 100 million phones.

Your experience is about normal for an iPhone, any model, purchased any time in the past 4+ years. A iPhone that is actually used will get about 12 to 24 hours on a charge. Because there is ALWAYS something running on it in background. The more apps you add the more will be running. The Standby time is meaningless, because the phone is never on standby. It's also normal for any other smart phone on the market, Android, Palm Pre, WinMob... Actually, the iPhone does better than most Android phones on battery life. The useful life on a charge is 5-10 hours of use, where use includes talking on the phone, accessing data, playing games or turning off the screen and letting Notifications and Push email continue to run.

I hope apple finds a solution that doesn't include reducing, limiting or removing any features included in the 4s otherwise they should refund the rather expensive asking price / contract price that everyone inevitably paid for a phone that was believed to be superior to the 3gs !

  Reguardless of how powerful they now are, how much money they make on a very basic level they should provide the customer base with what they say this phone can do !

I'm sick of buying something ,then being let down only for a company to have a ready made excuse or disclaimer available for when I complain.

  Big companies get away with misleading consumers every day and the problem is generally we all accept it. Its wrong and unethical to me and what's more they make you feel in the wrong for complaining about it.

Get the 4S to do what you promote it to do or give me my money back Apple.

Thanks for your reply.

I think I will go to apple store soon to talk to the people there. Perhaps changing my current phone to one with a better battery is a proper solution.

I came to this post because I wanted to know if my short battery was normal or not. Now I think it is not because it is similar to many of the problem posts here and this makes me realize that there may exist iPhone 4S that is not affected by this battery problem.

Awaiting my turn at the genius bar now.  Cannot believe how awful the 4S battery has been.  The only way this is going to change, is if the media picks up the story like they did with antenna-gate.  It's a pretty hopeless feeling.  I think I'm going to return this for my old blackberry until I read that they fixed this.  Sad face.

just got off with an Apple rep. Said there weren't any known issues. Ive only had the phone for 2 days now, but he said that if i continue to notice considerable decrease in battery to call back, and that Apple might consider the device defective. Not sure what to think

thenandnow wrote:

 

...  this makes me realize that there may exist iPhone 4S that is not affected by this battery problem.

I wish I knew what to suggest, but I'm having pretty decent life from my battery.  My 4S was charged Saturday morning.  Now it's Monday at 8PM my time, and it's still going, at 13%.  Not a lot of real use, mostly standby.  This afternoon I used the camera for maybe 10 minutes and made a 10 minute Facetime call, did some web browsing, listened to some songs, downloaded emails.  But the phone seems to "stand by" with very little battery usage.  Using the camera made that portion of the back of the case warm up, but not hot.

For the 30 minutes or so when I used the camera and did Facetime, the battery went quickly from 33% to 23%.

So, after being on for 56-60 hours, it's at 13%.  However, I don't doubt the people who say they are having major troubles with battery life.

Thanks for the information.

Not sure if this has been posted in this discussion, but worth checking out:

http://www.macworld.com/article/163200/2011/10/troubleshoot_iphone4s_battery.htm l

I am checking my 3GS at the moment (that no longer as 3G service, only WiFI) and I see it accumulating crash logs at a rate of 4 per minute (much as described in the article above). I am watching the batter decline rapidly (~20% in the last, right after I attached to my home wifi network) 

I do not see similar files in my 4S which seemed to behave better today. Based on other comments in the thread, I did delete my email accounts and then restablished them (iCloud and an imap acct from work). So from the article, the hypothesis would be that there is something wrong in an iCloud preference or other file, and perhaps resetting solves the problem. This might explain why some people have noted that resetting email accounts seems to help with the battery problem.

I am going to turn of WiFi - which should eliminate the crash files. Then I am going to reset the iCloud account, which I predict ought to resolve the problem. We'll see - I am sure there is more than one issue at play, but this may be the explanation in some cases.

Just throwing in my two cents as well. I am a first time iPhone user. I have the new 4S and am having very similar battery issues to the majority of posters. I am on Verizon and most of the time have very strong signal.

OK so I went to a genius appointment today.  He told me YES!  Apple is aware of the issue.  It is software based and we all need to wait until the next update comes out in a couple of weeks.  He ran a full scan on my phone and nothing was wrong with it.  He did give me a receipt saying that if the battery didnt get fixed with the next update I was documented and covered for a new phone!